The Story Behind The Song: How Fiona Apple’s mistake inspired ‘Paper Bag’
“I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star,” Fiona Apple reflects in the opening line for ‘Paper Bag’, “To pray on, or wish on or something like that”.
The song appears on her sophomore album, 1999’s When the Pawn…, written in the midst of Apple’s sudden fame and subsequent ridicule from the press and critical public opinion. Catapulted into success at just 18 years old with the release of her debut album, 1996’s Tidal, she was acclaimed by critics, lauded by fans and heavily scrutinised by both, all at once. Apple was celebrated for her realism from which her lyrics are written, but also questioned for it, with an air of disbelief at how someone could be so unflinchingly honest and self-aware at such a young age.
Apple proved that she could be just as vulnerable in her writing as she was defiant against her perception and, from the moment that Tidal was born, she ensured that her integrity remained intact.
Thus, the creation of When the Pawn… was clouded by the heavy burden of public perception, one that Apple could not help but notice. The album’s full title, then, is a 444-character poem she wrote in response to reactions to a Spin cover story written about her, with one line proclaiming, “There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might”.
Lyrically, the album continued the songsmith’s tradition of writing from a deeply personal gaze, tackling her connection with those around her, romantically and platonically, as well as her connection with her inner self: her desires, her afflictions and how she continued to persist between the two.
Across When the Pawn…, Apple remains unafraid to confront agonising truths, as ‘Get Gone’ hears her reclaim herself from a relationship gone sour, while ‘Limp’ challenges her lover’s attempts to gaslight her into succumbing to abuse. ‘To Your Love’ directly addresses every perception of her, both society’s and her own, but the album’s third single, ‘Paper Bag’, one of her most well-known, is a heartbreaking tale inspired, in part, by a mistaken glimpse caught outside of a car window.
As reported in a Vulture profile, she was riding in a car with her father in Los Angeles, leaving a recording session for Tidal. In an upset mood, she glanced out the window and saw a dove in the sky, or rather, she thought she saw a dove. As her lyrics explain, “But then the dove of hope began its downward slope / And I believed for a moment that my chances were / Approaching to be grabbed…” Reeling from a daydream of a boy that she knew, deep down, she could not be with, the dove was a surprise, welcome gift, a fleeting chance at happiness. “But as it came down near, so did a weary tear,” she sings, “I thought it was a bird, but it was just a paper bag”.
Sung with an incoming sense of dread, Apple captures the brief, desperate moment poetically but also with a simplicity that anyone can relate to; imagine being consumed by sadness, finding a sheer glimmer of hope in the sky, only to have it be a piece of trash blowing in the wind.
Her anguish only builds as the song progresses, turning ‘Paper Bag’ into a song of aspirations crushed by the truth. She parses through various elements of pain inflicted upon her, an all-encompassing loneliness that wrestles with desire, the disappointment when an idealised vision of someone becomes grounded in reality, and the longing for this boy she cannot have, all expounded in the line, “Hunger hurts but starving works when it costs too much to love”.
‘Paper Bag’ is one of the endless instances of Apple’s singular mind turning a passing moment into a tribute to human existence, harnessing the range of emotions that course through her and releasing them with an honesty that remains unparalleled.
